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Compare And Contrast Wallace And Ernest Hemingway

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David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway are two American writers. Even though they come from different generations, both men argue about the same subject, abortion, which is controversial during their time. While both of their short stories using a third person narrative, Wallace portrays his characters’ actions and behaviours by making readers experience their thoughts in “Good People” while Hemingway portray his characters by allowing readers to observe them from the outside in “Hills Like White Elephants”. Firstly, their different writing styles can help the reader to either understand the characters relationship quickly or slowly. Next, it would seem that the involvement of reader to understand the characters in “Good People” is greater than in “Hills Like White Elephants”. Based on these two short stories, Wallace introduces his idea through the minds of his characters, which is Lane and Sheri. Yet Hemingway uses a documentary style such as dialogue in order to express the idea of abortion. The differences in their writing can make the reader either to understand their stories and their characters …show more content…

Wallace portrays the complexity of Lane’s mind which make the reader to experience an emotional roller coaster and understand better about what he is going through with Sheri. The reader will feel as if they are inside Lane’s head. The representation of his guilt and hard decision pushes the reader to have sympathy on his decision with Sheri. For example, the heavy uses of symbolism such as “the tree’s cloud of branches all half in the water” add more depth to the story and give significances of their relationship (Wallace 216). Because of the abundance of symbolism in “Good People”, it gives the reader the overall colour of the story, which it has dark and heavy feel when the reader read the

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The narrator distanced his path of finding his own voice even more when he imitated Hemingway’s stories. Rather than expressing his own voice and identity into his stories, the narrator “typed out Hemingway’s stories” (Wolff 110) causing his search to find his voice much longer. It is clear that Hemingway’s contributions to the school’s literacy contest motivated the narrator erroneously by discouraging the narrator from finding his own

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While both works analyze the subject of power, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston highlights equality, whereas in the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway emphasizes the manipulation of power. Hemingway portrays his message through dialogue, lending the reader ques to unveil the hidden message. In contrast, Hurston allows the reader to feel the inferiority of her main character, Janie, and experience the abuse of power firsthand. Utilizing symbolism and dialogue, both authors exemplify the idea that men obtain a toxic power. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is introduced to Janie through the eyes of the “porch sitters.”

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passion. C. Wallace provides a depiction of how people view everyday situations from a pessimistic perspective: D. “But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this” (Wallace 20). E. Wallace’s description of the lady sounds plausible to the audience because one may have constructed similar thoughts about total strangers. By beginning his argument with the description of the lady, Wallace allows the audience to be emotionally connected to the situation, therefore, his argument becomes more applicable.

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1159 Words | 5 Pages

Thus, the couple is stuck in a battle between right and wrong as well as good, and evil. As the story proceeds, one will notice Wallace uses various writing techniques to depict his character, Lane Dean, in order to let readers gain a better understanding of him. For instance, he uses a third person point of view to describe Lane’s struggles, feelings, and thoughts. The usage of third person point of view in David Wallace’s “Good People” enables readers to learn Lane Dean’s struggles.

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The man she is with keeps pushing her to make a life-changing decision about an abortion and she says, “I realize… Can’t we maybe stop talking?,” (Hemingway 3). Including this issue specifically is bold for Hemingway as it is controversial, yet he crafts it to bring even more attention to the Girl’s rights and intentionally characterizes her with this strong will and independence. She later threatens to scream, demonstrating that the Girl is unafraid to bring attention to this altercation. Hemingway provides the Girl with a voice that many women did not have. The man craves authority and manipulates her by saying, “I think [getting the abortion is] the best thing to do.

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1554 Words | 7 Pages

Throughout the short story (1), “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway is speaking about a seemingly unwanted pregnancy and a woman’s uneasiness with going through an abortion. However, Hemingway never explicitly says in this work of fiction (2) that it is about abortion or that the woman, Jig, is uncomfortable with it, but uses symbolism (3) to present this to the audience. At the time “Hills like White Elephants” was published, in 1927, abortion was illegal in most places and a very taboo subject that wasn’t to be openly discussed in public. Thus, Hemingway relied greatly upon the use of symbolism to get his message across for this reason as well as the third person narrator (4) that did not give insight into the character’s thoughts within this piece of literature (5) . He uses symbols such as the train station, white hills, the baggage, and the drinks to point towards the underlying internal conflict (6) of Jig’s decision that is being heavily influenced by the American man, who wants Jig to get the abortion.

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The relationship between the American and the girl in “Hills Like White Elephants.” In the 1900s, there was a distinct relationship between a man and a woman, with each having their own traits. During this time, Ernest Hemingway also had his own idea of this relationship which he portrays in his story, “Hills Like White Elephants”. Within this story, the relationship between the two characters, the American and the girl, is portrayed as strained and distanced by their constant avoidance of the “elephant in the room”.

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Lastley, Lane changes his beliefs in the church and can decide what to do. When and how the character changes affect how Wallace conveys the story and its themes. Wallace wrote Good People to expose the hypocrisy in Christianity and had the reader discover throughout multiple epiphanies and revelations that exposes this hypocrisy while also changing the main character. Lane changes because he discovers this hypocrisy, much like the reader does, and the message could not be conveyed as strongly without the narrator changing as well. The author exemplifies a perfectly case of how people view themselves and their morals.

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Initially written as a review of H. L. Hix’s Morte dAuthor: An Autopsy, Greatly Exaggerated discusses about Hix’s thesis that questions the importance of an author’s entity to the understanding of a text. There is a loss in significance for Wallace’s roles of a writer and analyst if we believe that there were no motives behind his writing. Wallace’s character entity could have been used as a way to rebel the former narrative, post-modern styles of writing, but it also seems as if Wallace was analyzing someone else’s experiences. Wallace believes that, “it is really critical readers who decide and thus determine what a piece of writing means (139),” which means that each person must consciously and actively attempt to look for genuine experiences for themselves instead of accepting what other people think they should be believing.

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The conflict between the two characters is the issue of abortion and whether or not the girl will go through it. Hemingway does not tell us that the girl is pregnant but hints it throughout the story referring to “the operation” as having an abortion. From the start, you can take

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1629 Words | 7 Pages

The dialogue in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” reveals a man’s and a woman’s incongruent conflict on abortion, and the author’s fundamentally feminist position is visible in the portrayal of the woman’s independent choice of whether or not to keep the baby she is carrying. The plot is very simple in the story which is less than 1500 words long. A woman and a man spend less than an hour on a hot summers day at a Spanish train station in the valley of Ebro as they are waiting for a train heading for Madrid. Their dialogue takes up most of the space and only few major actions take place.

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506 Words | 3 Pages

The entire short-story is made up of only nine sentences, some reaching over 250 words. This is important because it reflects chaos and shows the panic of the baby’s parents. They don’t have time to pause in these circumstances, so the author doesn't pause in his writing. Each sentences is a long stream of consciousness which embodies the thoughts of the characters. David Foster Wallace is purposeful in every feature of this short-story.

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786 Words | 4 Pages

During the course of the story “Hills Like White Elephants” the author Ernest Hemingway uses symbolism to describe the the main idea of the girl having the “operation.” Hemingway uses the landscape, the white elephant, and the term “elephant in the room” to represent different aspects of the pregnancy and abortion. The landscape in the story represents choosing the abortion or choosing to keep the baby. The setting of the story is at a train station.

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1044 Words | 5 Pages

In his story “Hills Like White Elephants”, Ernest Hemingway points out the couple's inability to make the decision: whether to abort the unborn child or not. The reader finds that the story deals with couple's miscommunication through the conversation and the emotions that they express. One can observe that no descriptions are given to the characters, thus, Hemingway creates universal dilemma to focus on the crucial issue. In this way, Hemingway leads the reader to identify with his female character that undergoes a struggle.

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The two authors are compared to each other when comparing and contrasting different writing styles. Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner’s differing treatment of their audiences through inventive usage of sentence structure, point of view, and varied word choice exemplify the stark differences between them. Many of the contrasting characteristics of Faulkner and Hemingway’s writing forms, specifically sentence structure, originate from their upbringing. William Faulkner’s comfortable childhood and easy access to higher education in the South directly contrasts that of Ernest Hemingway, who grew up in the North and was unable to go to secondary school, joining the U.S. Army instead.

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